


Radio and the Paris gang

by Fanfan118



Category: Heartstopper (Webcomic), Osemanverse, Radio Silence - Alice Oseman
Genre: Aled last needs to be saved at all costs, Autor has no idea if this fits in the timeline, Coming Out, Demisexuality, During Canon, F/F, Friendship, M/M, Mention of eating disorder, Post-Canon, Snippets, like really awesome friendship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:54:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25713889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fanfan118/pseuds/Fanfan118
Summary: A bunch of short snippets telling a story linking together Radio Silence and Heartstoppers. The gang meets Daniel and Frances and finds out about Univers City, and all the terrible problems in Aled’s life.Can they help him?
Relationships: Aled Last & Carys Last, Charles "Charlie" Spring & Aled Last, Dae-Sung "Daniel" Jun/Aled Last, Nicholas "Nick" Nelson & Aled Last, Nicholas "Nick" Nelson/Charles "Charlie" Spring
Comments: 7
Kudos: 19





	1. Chapter 1

_Nick_

I entered the common room, having just come back from rugby practice when I spotted him. Aled Last, hidden away in a corner with his head on a table and earphones tugged in.

Like usual, nobody noticed him. That was something I had noticed since Charlie had introduced us and I became friends with Aled. He was quiet. Not that there was anything wrong with that. He hardly ever spoke to anyone outside our friend group, it’s like to most other people he might as well not exist.

But of course, what these people didn’t know was that Aled was a great friend. He would always there for you, especially if you’re me and needed a math crash course before an exam. And he was fun and kind and awesome, just like everyone else in the “Paris gang” (as Darcy liked to call us).

I went over to him. “Hi, Aled, have you seen Charlie?”

Aled doesn't respond. As I look closer, I see that his long hair has fallen into his face. I notice a soft snorting. His eyes are closed.

“Oh, okay.” Feeling awkward for a second, I decide to sit next to the sleeping Aled. He looked kind of like a puppy lying there. With Aled being shy as he was, awful people like Harry or Ben Hope could get some terrible ideas, seeing him defenseless like that. So, I stay.

Unlike what I had expected, it wasn’t music that came from his earphones. It was a weird sounding distorted voice, maybe a podcast or something. I couldn’t make out the words, so I decided to let it go and ask him when he woke up.

Checking my phone and sending a quick text to Charlie, I started to wonder what had kept Aled up last night. He never seemed the kind of guy to overdo it on a school night or needed a last-minute nightly study session for a test.

I was just texting Charlie the adorable photo of Nellie I made that morning, so I barely noticed Aled stirring. 

“H-Hello, I hope…”

“Aled?”

“Somebody is...listening…” He muttered, his face distorting like he was having a nightmare.

“Everything alright?” I nudge him a little bit.

His eyes slowly open, the sleepiness still in his face. He looked terribly confused. “February?”

“It’s me, Nick.”

Then his eyes snapped open with panic and he shoved the earphone in his pockets. He looked at me like a poor deer caught in the headlights.

“You’re okay, mate?”

After a long moment of thinking, he said: “Y-yeah.” Aled looked down, avoiding my eyes.

“Anyway…” I felt really, really confused. “What were you listening to?” I asked, cheerfully, trying to lift the mood.

That didn’t go so well. Aled looked even more terrified if that was possible and jumped up for his seat. “Music,” he said. “I-I got to go.”

“Oh, ehh, alright,” I said, with him already turning to leave. “You’re sure you’re okay? Sounded like you were having a nightmare or something.”

He stopped, turning around, but not meeting my eyes. “Yeah…I’m okay.” Then he left, half running, almost bumping into several people on the way out of the common room. I sat at the table, alone.

Now, I knew the signs of things going bad, like really bad, from Charlie. And that was either a really weird quirk I just didn’t get or a monstrously big warning sign.

I decided to keep an eye on Aled Last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Thank you for reading this far. This is basically me throwing out a few ideas that I got after reading Heartstoppers and Radio silence and wondering what the gang from HS would think about Aled’s story in RS.   
> Leave a comment if you like (=  
> I hope you enjoy!


	2. Chapter 2

_Charlie_

I sat at the lunch table moving around my food with a fork. I had spent the last twenty minutes neatly arranging all the parts of my school provided lunch. The room was stuffy and way too loud. I felt kind of sick. It wasn’t exactly a bad day. On a bad day, I would have probably thrown that stupid perfect plate of pasta across the room.

But it wasn’t a good one either.

Sighing, I shoved the plate away. I knew Nick wouldn’t me not having lunch, but during breakfast, I had a little more cereal than normal. I think I did, it felt like it had been way too much. I had to balance that out somehow.

Nick’s worried face wouldn’t get out of my head. I took a breath and stayed my hands. _I’ll eat something when I’m over at your house later_ , I promised the image of him.

There were still a few minutes in the break, so I got out my phone to text Nick only to see that he had already written me. He wanted to meet up near the rugby field. Now sneaking in a quick secret make-out session during school wouldn’t have been too unusual when I still had to worry about coming out, but that we didn’t have to hide anymore, I felt like this would be about something else.

Abandoning all pretenses of eating anything I left the lunchroom. A couple of minutes later, I met Nick behind the changing room. He smiled when he saw me. “Hi, Charlie! How is your day?”

I still felt a little guilty for lunch, so I said: “It’s okay, just a little stressful. Can I come over to your place for dinner?”

The flash of worry on Nick’s face told me he understood immediately. “Of course!” He said quickly. “My mom always loves you staying for dinner.”

That was true. She sometimes lightheartedly joked about me not getting enough food at home. I knew she didn’t know any better, but that always made me feel terrible.

“Great!” I decided to change the subject by giving him a surprise peck on the cheek. He blushed in the cutest way imaginable. “Something tells me you didn’t want to meet up for secret snogging behind the locker-room like we used to.”

His expression turned more serious, seemingly having just remembered why he wanted to see me. “Oh, eh, yeah. Listen, it’s about Aled.”

“Aled?”

“Yeah, have you…” He paused seemingly looking for the right words. “Noticed anything off about him?”

I thought for a second. I did notice him not being around as often. He turned down going to the movies last week. I had thought that it was just school stress. Aled was super clever and got way better grades than any of us.

I tried to remember the times I had seen him recently. Aled wasn’t exactly a person that would go out of his way to talk or express his emotions, but now that I thought about it, there was something off. In the last couple of weeks, his shyness had gone from not speaking a lot to hardly saying anything at all.

“You think there is something wrong?” I asked Nick.

He nodded. “I found him asleep in the common room, having a nightmare, and when I talked to him he just left.”

“Oh, that’s not good.”

Together, we decided to keep an eye on him. Over the next couple of days, the erratic behavior of Aled got worse. It seemed like he was actively avoiding everyone in our friend’s group. He only responded to text days later and then only with super short answers. The few times I did spot him, he had his earphones in and seemed completely zoned out from the world.

Nick and I decided that I would try talking to Aled alone since I had known him the longest.

Even getting to him was a challenge. After a couple times of him disappearing into a crowd of other students, as I was about to talk to him, I decided to wait on him outside of his math class. I had to jog after him as the class ended. “Hey, Aled.” I grabbed his shoulder, having caught up to him down the hall. He flinched at a little at the touch.

“Hi, Charlie.” He turned to me but didn’t meet my eyes. The closer I looked the more rings I saw under his eyes. I wondered if he had slept at all in the last week.

“Just wanted to ask you if everything is alright?”

He almost jumped at the question. “I-I’m fine.” Aled rubbed his arm as if I had punched him.

“It’s just you’ve been kind of distant lately.”

“I don’t know…” He avoided my eyes like I hadn’t said anything.

“You know when I got outed and the bullying got really, really bad?”

Aled nodded, looking at me a little confused.

“I wouldn’t have made it through that without you and Tao,” I struggled to explain. “I’m bad at explaining it, but what I’m trying to say is, if anything is going on you can talk to me or Nick or any of us.”

“Nothing is wrong, Charlie,” Aled said. Or at least that was what I think he said because he spoke so quietly, I was basically trying to read his lips.

“Okay, but if it’s anything about, you know, school or home-“

“I got to go.” Now I can’t describe Aled’s response better, but he turned and ran for his life. Like not walking away fast, but literally sprinting away from me like a gazelle running away from a predator through the school hallway.

“This isn’t good…” I was laying on Nick’s bed, his dog Nellie sleeping by my legs.

“He’s our friend! We got to help him somehow,” Nick said, frustratedly, spinning around in his swiveling chair. 

I tried to think hard. I had been friends with Aled Last for years, but I was shocked at how I know hardly anything about him. I knew he lived with his mom and sister, but I didn’t even know where. When we would meet up it was always at my or another friend's place, or in the city. Aled never talked about his home life, except for a few times about his sister.

There was clearly something he had been avoiding telling us for years. Something bad. I hated myself for not noticing sooner.

“Does he have any other friends except for us in the Paris gang?” Nick asked.

“No, I don’t think-“ Then I suddenly remembered. I jumped up from the bed, rudely waking up Nellie. “I got it.”

“What? You know what’s wrong?” Nick stopped spinning in the chair and looked at me hopefully.

“Not exactly, but-“ I stopped myself awkwardly. “I Kind of can’t tell you.”

“Why not?” Nick asked confused.

“It’s something he told me in secret. Something he wouldn’t want me to tell other people.” I knew from experience that this was **not** something you just told other people without the person wanting you to.

“Okay.” Nick nodded understandingly. “So, you have a plan?”

“Yes.” I knew that to figure out what was going on with Aled, I needed to pay a visit to a certain head boy at the academy.


	3. Chapter 3

„Excuse me?“ I tapped on the girl's shoulder. I hate randomly bothering strangers, but after searching through the academy for what felt like forever, I was both running out of time before the school day ended and patience. 

The girl had been putting up posters while listening to something on her headphones. She spun around, jumping a little at my interruption. She must have been really into whatever she had been listening to.

“Oh, hi,” the girl said, giving me a smile after snapping out of being startled. She had curly brown hair. On her face, freckles dotted the light brown skin. “Can I help you?” She gave me a curious smile.

“Y-yeah,” I said, a little relieved that the random person I decided to ask didn’t seem to be a jerk. “I’m looking for someone actually.”

“Then you have come to the right person.” She laughed, stepping aside to reveal the poster she had been putting up. It was a selfie of her faking a double chin, promising free cookies to anyone who voted for her to be head girl. “My name is Francis and I’m the current and future head girl. Are you new? Haven’t seen you around before.”

“I’m from Truham, I’m just visiting. I’m looking for a boy named Daniel Jun, do you know him?” 

“Sorry,” the girl laughed, leaving me very confused, like I wasn’t getting some inside joke.

“So, you don’t know him?”  _ Great _ , now I would both not find him today  _ and  _ have pumped myself up to ask a stranger for nothing.

“No, I mean sorry that you are looking for the guy,” Francis quickly said after noticing his look. That made me even more confused. Was Daniel that bad? 

Ever since Aled told him, I couldn’t help but wonder who this Daniel guy was and what kind of person Aled would be interested in. In reality, I didn’t know a whole lot more about Daniel Jun then that he went to the academy and that he and Aled were probably dating. Aled wasn’t exactly forthcoming with information about anything and I from personal experience knew that praying about stuff like this was uncool, under normal circumstances. 

When I asked to meet this boy, Aled had always made some lame excuses about Daniel being busy and eventually I had decided to stop pushing it. That was before Aled started acting so weird. 

“Can you tell me where he might be?”

“So, where would Daniel Jun be around this time.” The girl tapped her chin in mock wonder. “He basically splits his time between studying and being extreme about his head boy campaign. Last I saw him plastering his face all over the corridor with the chemistry classrooms.” Her tone was dripping with sarcasm. 

“Isn’t that exactly what you’re doing?”

“Eh, no. I mean yes, but I’m doing it all ironically,” Francis defended. I wasn’t too sure I believed her, since she had obviously won the election for head girl last year. 

The bell rang and I realized that I should hurry.

“Thanks, Francis!” I said, making of the hallway marked ‘chemistry’ I had seen earlier. 

“See you around, boy from Truham.” Although I wasn’t sure why I would ever see that girl again. 

* * *

“Hey, school is out, what are you doing here?” Came a voice from behind me. When I got there the chemistry hallway had been empty, so I was just about to head back home, feeling quite bumped.

Then I turned around. “You’re Daniel Jun!?” I had stalked him on social media before coming here so I vaguely knew what he looked like and what his voice sounded like from a couple of recorded speeches on the school’s website. 

“Yes.” He tapped his foot on the ground, looking almost offended at me not knowing who he was. “No sticking around the corridor after hours. If you have got a club, or something go there.”

“I-I’m not from here, I’m from Truham.”

He ran his hand over his face in frustration. “Then what the hell are you doing here? If you're visiting, you should stay with your guide.” Now he wasn’t a buff guy, but he looked like he would like to physically throw me out.

For a moment I thought about that if I really were interested in changing school, this would be a terrible first impression. And this was Aled’s boyfriend? I was starting to get a terrible suspicion about the reason for his erratic behavior, as of late. 

I tried to straighten myself. I needed to make sure Aled was okay. 

“You’re just going to stand-“

“I think we have a friend in common. That’s why I’m here. It’s about Aled,” I managed to sound at least a little bit confident. 

At that name all the annoyance dropped from Daniel Jun’s face. For a moment he looked like he had been punched in the stomach. Then he quickly put on a stern face. He came a few steps closer and I felt his gaze like he was somehow analyzing me. 

“Your Charlie Spring.” 

I nodded. 

Then he stepped to a door of an empty classroom and opened it. “Let’s not talk out here.”

This weirdly reminded me of the times I had secretly made out with Ben Hope in empty classrooms, but I followed him inside. I needed to get to the bottom of this. 

“So about Aled-“ I started. 

“Did something happen to him?” Daniel asked, he couldn’t keep a drip of panic from his voice. 

“What? No. It’s just, he’s been acting weird lately. Like he isn’t himself. He’s ditching our friend group all the time; he is tired constantly; I even can’t remember the last time any of us really talked to him.”

“Oh,” was all Daniel said. 

“You know what’s happening to him?” I asked. I know it might be a little premature and unfair, but I can’t keep a bit of accusation from my voice. I remembered my time in a toxic and harmful relationship. There were just all these scenarios in my head about Aled’s boyfriend trying to cut him off from his other friends. 

And the few minutes of Daniel I had seen hadn’t exactly done a great job lessening my worries. 

“Why the hell would I know?” Daniel said.

“You’re-You’re his-“ I hesitated thinking about if it was an okay word to use- “Boyfriend. You and Daniel are together, right?”

Of all things, I didn’t expect Daniel’s stern look to break into a laugh. “He told you about that, didn’t he? And now you think this is some kind of abusive boyfriend trop.”

“Then what is it?” God, I felt terribly uncomfortable. But I needed to keep on it. If this really was Daniel, I couldn’t let him talk himself out of it.

“I don’t fucking know!” Daniel’s yell stunned me. There was desperation in it and I realized this had been pushing on him for probably longer than for me and my friends. “Do you even know Aled? He never talks about anything! Did you know his sister left? Just packed her things and fucking left without a trace!”

“What?” I hardly even knew that Aled had a sister. 

“See. He just bottles it all up!” Daniel was probably about to cry. “Like I’m his boyfriend and I had to learn that, by noticing that her room was abandoned. He has nightmares, like so bad he needs to go vomit in the middle of the night. He thinks I don’t notice, but I do. And now Aled is spending all his time dug into his room, working on that fucking-“ He stopped himself. 

Daniel dropped himself onto a chair and tried to regain his composure. Something told me that outburst in front of basically strangers wasn’t like him. It took him a moment to regain his composure. 

I had a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach. How could any of us not notice things getting this messed up for Aled? “How can we help him?” I asked Daniel. 

He had mostly restored his stoic expression, but when he looked up I could hear the exhaustion in his voice. “I don’t know…”

At that moment I felt guilty for ever thinking that this was Daniel’s fault. Because the way he talked about Aled, it was clear that he was absolutely in love with him. He would never intentionally hurt him, even if he was kind of a jerk. 

“I have no fucking clue,” Daniel reapted. “You should go home.” 

We really didn’t have much else to say to each other and I felt like after losing control for just a moment, Daniel wasn’t going to tell me more or jump into making some kind of plan with me. On the way home I texted Nick. I wasn’t sure how much I should tell him about Aled’s problems, so I just wrote:

_ Things with Aled are way worse than we thought  _ = (

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so I almost forgot about this story, sry!!!  
> I hope you enjoyed and if you have any ideas for interactions between Radio Silence and Heartstopper/Solitaire characters for the strory, let me know.


End file.
